Carry-On Knife Ruling Needs Your Support

Among other small multi-tools and pocketknives, the Leatherman Tool Squirt reportedly would be legal to carry on airlines when the new TSA ruling goes into effect April 25.

The Transportation Security Administration’s recent ruling allowing small pocketknives and multi-tools on airliners is under fire from all anti-knife sides and needs your help.

According to Knife Rights, Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey (D) and New York Rep. Michael G. Grimm (R) introduced the “No Knives Act” (HR 1093) that would stop the new TSA rules, freezing the permitted items list as it stands now. New York Sen. Charles Schumer (D) and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) introduced an amendment that would prohibit the TSA from allowing knives on planes.

According to the new TSA rules, small pocketknives and multi-tools would be allowed in carry-on beginning April 25. Such knives/multi-tools could not have blades over 2.36 inches long nor over a half-inch wide, could not have locking blades, and could not have “molded handles,” which apparently means finger-grooved or contoured handles and not all handles made via the molding process (though even that is not entirely clear as per the new rules).

The American Knife & Tool Institute, Victorinox Swiss Army and the Leatherman Tool Group were instrumental in getting TSA to adopt the change. According to reports, the new rules are very similar if not identical to the rules adopted earlier by the International Civil Aviation Organization, the international equivalent of the TSA.

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